David Hoover: My collecting obsession doesn’t end with Marilyn

Now that I have gotten the Marilyn Monroe stuff out of the way, let’s move on to other collecting hobbies that I have.

David Hoover

Now that I have gotten the Marilyn Monroe stuff out of the way, let’s move on to other collecting hobbies that I have.

Stamps: I first started collecting stamps in 1998. I was at a collectibles show checking out the baseball cards section when I ran into a family friend who had a booth set up selling stamps. We talked for a while about baseball cards until the conversation switched to stamps. He told me all kinds of interesting things about stamps, their values and different types of errors. It was very similar to collecting sports cards.

I remember him asking me if I collected stamps, what would I start with. I, of course, answered Marilyn Monroe. That was all it took. He whipped out a sheet of 1995 Marilyn Monroe 32¢ stamps from the Legends of Hollywood series and offered to sell it to me at face value (which was $6.40). I couldn’t refuse, and thus began the stamp collecting.

I started out just buying Marilyn Monroe-related stamps, but I eventually turned to any and all types. I also had my family saving stamps from mail they had received and went as far as scolding my mother when I found an envelope in her trash can with a perfectly good stamp on it.

I had people that I worked with also saving stamps for me and they would bring in manila envelopes every so often with piles of stamps inside. Looking up at my desk here at work, I see five desk shelves piled with stamps (I need to take those home one of these days).

Home, that is where I have boxes and boxes of stamps in the garage (sitting beside the boxes of Marilyn stuff). Some I have gone through, some I haven’t.

Most of the stamps I have are newer, but I do have a few from the 1920s-1930s that I have purchased on eBay or that have been given to me as a present.

There are many types of stamps you can collect, and I’m not going to even pretend that I know that much about them. What I do know is that there is a stamp out there known as the Inverted Jenny that was issued May 10, 1918, which the image of the Curtiss JN-4 airplane in the center of the design was accidentally printed upside-down. Only a handful of them exist. In 2007, this one stamp sold for $977,500. Some of these stamps I am collecting today might only display 1¢, 10¢ or 42¢, but who knows, one of these days one single stamp I have might be worth almost $1 million.

David Hoover is the design editor for The Carthage Press. He also collects way too many things. To contact David, e-mail dhoover@gatehousemedia.com.